Gemini-2 confusing east and west
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I have a new G11/Gemini-2 that I bought last summer. I've set up a Home park location of due west, and park it when I'm done each evening.
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I've noticed that if I leave it unpowered for more than a couple of days, when I turn it back on and do a warm restart, Gemini reports that it is pointing East, not West.? I thought this might be that the battery in Gemini was low (although I had just bought it), so I bought and installed a fresh one recently. However the problem is still happening.
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After power up and warm restart, with scope physically pointing west, it reports that it is pointing east:
If I then tell it to a?Park CWD (when it is parked at the Home position pointing west), it actually moves to the correct?location at the pole,?but as the?mount is physically slewing from West to North, it reports that it?is slewing from East to North:
Even if I tell it to park at my Home location (which I defined as west), the mount will physically move to point west, but reporting that it is moving east. However, if I tell it to slew to some target that is up in the sky from the Home location, it starts to slew the telescope down into the ground. So although it knows where CWD and Home are physically, its coordinates are treated differently.
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From the CWD position, I turn off the power to Gemini and then do a cold boot, and everything is fine for a few days. The position it reports matches the way the telescope is pointing. If I tell it to slew to a target, the target is usually in my guide scope even before I build an alignment model.
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Scope again parked at Home position (west) (after cold boot at CWD fixed the problem):
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FYI, this is my second Gemini unit. I have a G11/Gemini-1 that is 20 years old so I'm familiar with settings like date/time, mount type, etc. This is just my first experience with a Gemini-2.? I know that Gemini-1 can act strangely when its battery gets low, so I wasn't especially worried about my new Gemini-2 until I replaced its battery and see it continuing to have the same problem intermittently.
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Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
-Joe
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The diagram in my message may not have been clear about what is going on. Maybe this will help.
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This is the situation when I power up Gemini-2 after being off for several days.
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When I tell it to park CWD, this is what happens:
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After doing a cold start (usually requiring a power cycle as well), it fixes the problem. If I tell it to park at my Home location (due west ), it reports the correct location now.??
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Leaving Gemini-2 unpowered for one day, the problem doesn't happen. If I leave it unpowered for several days, that is when it starts up (after a Warm Restart) with the wrong location reported.? As I mentioned in my previous message, maybe the firmware update fixed something. I'm leaving it off for a few days right now to see what happens when I restart it next.
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If it takes several days for this to happen, but doesn't happen within 24 hours, it sounds like you may have an issue with the real-time clock in Gemini. It's powered by a 3v battery internally, so that could be another source of problems. I would check how off the Gemini-reported? date and time is after a few days of Gemini being powered down.
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On Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 11:20 AM, Joe Ulowetz wrote:
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Hi Joe,
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I meant to ask you this previously but when you pulled out the battery did you by chance verify the old and new battery voltage with a DMM - digital multi meter?? This would be a couple of additional data points for those of us who track this interesting stuff LOL!
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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware? Astrospheric - South Pasadena, CA? |
Chip Louie
Paul Kanevsky